The Minister for Health Simon Harris has ruled out any Government intervention on the abortion issue ahead of the proposed Citizens Assembly debate. Reacting to the latest call by a UN body for Ireland to amend its abortion laws, Minister Harris expressed his personal sense of upset at the case at the heart of the call, that of a woman who received a diagnosis of congenital defects in her unborn child and who travelled to England for an abortion, but he reiterated his belief that attempting to develop a consensus approach through a Citizens Assembly was the best way forward and the UN committee findings would form part of that process. Such an assembly could get underway this autumn.
Catholic schools have been urged to ban Amnesty International from addressing their students due to the organisation’s support for the introduction of abortion to Ireland. Speaking to The Irish Catholic newspaper, Niamh Uí Bhriain of the Life Institute said Catholic schools have to “draw a line in the sand” on the issue. “If you are a group campaigning aggressively for abortion, something that is completely contrary to a Catholic ethos, then you don’t have a right to visit Catholic schools and attempt to gain support for your organisation. Cora Sherlock of the Pro Life Campaign agreed with the call. “Given Amnesty is perhaps best known in Ireland for its vocal stance in favour of repealing the Eighth Amendment, I would question whether it is appropriate for them to be speaking to young schoolchildren who can’t understand the full implications of abortion.”
The US state of California has become the fifth state to introduce assisted suicide. As of June 9, doctors are empowered to give lethal prescriptions to adults who are able to make medical decisions if their attending physician and a consulting physician have diagnosed a terminal disease expected to end in death within six months. The move has been condemned by Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles who said that California has “crossed a line… from being a society that cares for those who are aging and sick to a society that kills those whose suffering we can no longer tolerate”.
The United Nations Human Rights Committee has called on Ireland to amend its abortion laws. Citing the 2011 case of a woman who failed to procure an abortion here following a diagnosis of congenital defects in her unborn child, the Committee has insisted that Ireland should end its constitutional protection for the unborn to protect patients and health workers from criminal sanction on terminations. The Committee also stated that the woman also suffered “inhuman” treatment in not being able to access abortion information as an option in her case.
All Presbyterian wedding ceremonies in Ireland must now include a statement that marriage is only between one man and one woman following a decision taken by the church’s general assembly in Belfast. The decision was reached following a resolution that stated: “Since the beginning of creation God, in his gracious purpose, provided marriage as the accepted way in which a man and a woman may come together as husband and wife. This is the only basis on which marriage can take place within the Presbyterian church in Ireland.”
Ireland has one of the highest rates of young people engaging in so-called ‘sexting’ of graphic messages to one another. In a study conducted by Dr Sheri Bauman, a professor of counselling at the University of Arizona, USA, Irish teens were fourth highest for explicit messages, images or video sent by mobile phone. The study found that sexting was more frequent among 14-17 year olds and that over 25% of students, from a survey of 300 post-primary Irish schools, acknowledged sending the graphic messages. The research found 4.4% of boys and 1.6% of girls aged 11-16 engaged in the behaviour.
A New York state legislator has risked controversy in calling abortion in his state an “African American genocide” due to the dramatically higher numbers of that cohort seeking abortion. State Assemblyman Ron Castorina Jr’s comment, made during a debate on broadening the availability of abortion in New York, drew fierce criticism, but he remained unrepentant, telling media afterwards: “This chamber likes to look at things through the prism of race and gender all the time, but when it’s inconvenient, when I brought up an issue through the prism of race, that’s insulting?” Figures for abortions in 2013 in New York reveal that for every 1,000 black babies born alive, 1,223 were aborted, significantly higher than for Hispanics or white Americans.
Britain’s former chief rabbi, Lord Jonathan Sacks, has warned that the West will collapse unless it reverses both its moral decline and collapsing birth rate. During a speech as he accepted the 2016 Templeton Prize for his contributions to religious understanding, Lord Sacks said: “Civilisations begin to die when they lose the moral passion that brought them into being in the first place. It happened to Greece and Rome, and it can happen to the West. The sure signs are these: a falling birth rate, moral decay, self-indulgence on the part of the rich, hopelessness on the part of the poor, unintegrated minorities, a failure to make sacrifices in the present for the sake of the future.”
Junior Minister John Halligan has called for the Dáil to prioritise laws for terminally ill people to access assisted suicide and for religious beliefs to be left out of any debate on the issue. The Minister, who introduced the Dying with Dignity Bill in December, said he intends to push for such a debate as soon as possible. “Dáil Éireann needs to enter this debate and, when we do, we need to do leave religious dogma at the door,” he stressed. Minister Halligan’s comments came in the wake of revelations that a leading right-to-die campaigner, Tom Curran, had assisted people in making plans for assisted suicide.
Partnership plans for the speedy divestment of Catholic schools laid out by Education Minister Richard Bruton have been criticised as they do not seek to strip Catholic schools of the right to prioritise Catholic students for admission. Minister Bruton’s decision not to affect the so-called ‘baptism rule’ was described as “desperately disappointing” by Labour Senator Aodhán Ó Ríordáin who lamented that it “flies in the face of all the progressive measures” his party had attempted to take. Austerity Alliance TD Paul Murphy attacked the decision as “outrageous”. However, the Minister’s approach has been backed by Dr Kevin Williams, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Evaluation, Quality and Inspection, School of Education, Dublin City University.
